


Pilgrimage

by pyramidsandporn



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyramidsandporn/pseuds/pyramidsandporn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his convalescence in the wake of an assassination attempt, a sceptical Darth Plagueis - and his accomplice, 11-4D - makes pilgrimage to Korriban in search of answers from the Dark Side....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pilgrimage

**Author's Note:**

> DARTH PLAGUEIS:  
> PILGRIMAGE
> 
> An era of galactic peace prospers.  
> Muun banker, HEGO DAMASK,  
> secretly the evil Dark Lord  
> of the Sith known as DARTH  
> PLAGUEIS has survived an  
> attempt on his life.
> 
> Newly recovered, but widely  
> believed to be dead, the  
> secret Sith Master -  
> accompanied by loyal droid,  
> 11-4D - leaves in search of  
> answers from the Dark Side  
> on the Sith homeworld of  
> Korriban....

Hego Damask seated himself at the helm of the sleek starship, and began to input co-ordinates with dexterous, long fingers. Other than the faint computerised tones of confirmation, the only sound to be heard within the vessel was a regular, hollow breathing, a not-quite death rattle. Damask had long seemed accustomed to the transpirator's mechanical clamor but inwardly lamented the rudimentary rebreather and its noise - a constant reminder of his mortality, a problem that, one day, would be rectified. But until then, however, the Muun would have to learn to live with it, or else design another, less obtrusive breath mask.

Unfolding himself from the Infiltrator's pilot seat, Damask rose to his feet. Hunched over in the starship, his enormous, bald cranium threatened to brush the ceiling, and awkwardly descended a lift into the more spacious, rounded ready room. Extending to his full height, the Muun's limber body and ashen complexion was rendered all the more wan by the stark lighting and pale green robes he wore.

"The Infiltrator is prepared to make the jump to lightspeed at your order, Magister Damask, sir," spoke a mechanical voice.  
"Proceed, OneOne-FourDee. Pilot the ship. I'll join you momentarily," replied Damask, in a reverberating tone of his own.  
"Very good, sir."

The chirpy-voiced droid gave a sort of salute with one of its multiple appendages before entering the lift. Opening a door, Damask retrieved a black zeyd-cloth robe, and, changing into it, affixed a lightsaber to his belt. To most the weapon would seem a touch too large, built to fit more elegantly in his hands, and while it was of expert construction it was also characteristically lacking of any gaudy aurodium or - heaven forbid - nova crystal accoutrements. A banker by day he may be, but Damask's species were not given to ostentatious displays of wealth, preferring to show it off in the form of power, and Damask had that in abundance.

The vessel gave a shuddering jolt and made the jump, now between-worlds and already far from Sojourn's primary.

"Magister Damask," 11-4D spoke over the ship's intercom, "We have entered hyperspace and should be in the Horuset system in six hours."  
The Muun stepped out into the harsh glare of the ready room's lights, and pulled the cowl of his black robe over his extensive cranium, resembling a gaunt hermit. "Very good, FourDee. But for the remainder of this pilgrimage, you will refer to me as Darth Plagueis."

* * *

  


While appearing from space as a mottled marble of sandy brown, the planet Korriban seemed, nonetheless, to maintain an ominous, malign aura about itself. A crimson corona that could only hint at the aeons of death that had been wrought in the name of its Dark Lords and pretenders to that titulary. Many claimed that Korriban was their home, their throne, their birth-right or their destiny. Only in one way was it anyone's - tomb. A sarcophagus world. In that manner it was almost forgiving to the myriad mausoleums that covered the planet's surface, for "tomb world" never conjures up the innumerable sentients slaughtered in their droves over this rock for one Empire, Imperium, Brotherhood, Cult or the other. History would struggle to remember those glorified with their sepulchers; it would fail to recognise the murders of millennia. A genocide world.

  


Careening over an asteroid belt in the Horuset system, the Infiltrator stealthily penetrated the upper atmosphere of the planet. Watching from the cockpit, Plagueis watched as the starfield-on-black morphed to a mystical flame, tinged with amethyst, hue.

 

"Take us over the planet awhile, FourDee. Let us see if this planet has come alive since last I was here."

"Yes, Darth Plagueis, sir."

 

High above the surface, the Infiltrator allowed for spectacular views of the rugged valleys, ancient Cyclopean monoliths and pyramidal monuments that covered whatever of the planet was not treacherous sand dune. The abandoned settlement of Dreshdae, a few of its buildings displaying an ageing Czerka Corporation logo that many would not recognise.

 

"Take us down in that valley, there," Plagueis said.

 

Landing on a rocky outcropping, the Infiltrator found a solid grounding. 11-4D released the boarding ramp, but remained in the cockpit while the Sith Lord descended.

 

Suddenly thankful for his breath mask, Plagueis squinted through a brief sandstorm, a scorching wind whipping through the valley. In the distance, many kilometres away, a gargantuan statue stood, of a solemn, horned man - one horn broken by the ages - leering down into the valleys. Lowering his gaze, and turning it inwards, the Sith Lord reached out with the Force. Grains of sand came into focus, each one a nucleus of dark power, each stone a Star Forge, the very rock coating the planet permeated it with a nascent, malignant power redolent of the ancient horrors of the Rakata- and then nothing. 

 

A hoarse gasp flew from Plagueis' mask, more in shock at the sudden emptiness he felt. There was a hint of power here, a truly magniloquent purpose, and yet every time a Sith Lord of the Bane line had set foot on Korriban, each had remarked on the folly of past masters. Bane himself had consigned the world to a historical footnote, abandoned by the Dark Side and not even a shadow of its former self. Plagueis was inclined to concur, and certainly not inclined to ghost stories or rumours of Sith spirits manifesting in ostentatious tombs. Though, he was also not one to ignore the frequency of these tales throughout the writings of older Sith lords or other pracitioners of the Dark Side. Korriban was once potent. Perhaps learning how and why it had become diluted could prove valuable, or perhaps not. Plagueis had even speculated that the mote of fleeting power he had felt was in fact his own, indicative of the truth of his calling, of the veracity of the Rule of Two.

 

But this was not the main reason he was here, Plagueis reminded himself, even as he telekinetically moved a heap of yellow-brown regolith from the withered face of a tomb. Historical inquiry notwithstanding, he had also become concerned with the advancement of his ultimate goal - to cure death. The attack four years prior in the Lodge of the Order of the Canted Circle by Maladian assassins had left him with a physical symptom of his own mortality; his own continued susceptibility to injury and death. Even Darth Sidious, his Sith Apprentice, had mused whether or not the Maladians' attack was the Force itself striking back for his continued forays into Sith alchemy, into the creation and extension of life. Though he had not confirmed this to his Apprentice - who even now was ignorant of his Master's pilgrimage - Plagueis believed this to be so. A test of his abilities. Bane's torment at the mandibles of orbalisks; the mechno-prosthesis Gravid's apprentice was forced to endure after she slew him, when the entire Sith legacy was endangered; Xeinus' tortures at the hands of Victus, his deranged teacher; Malak; Sion... so often were the Dark Side's tests thoroughly destructive, but each and every one found a twisted sort of comfort in knowing that they succeeded. Yet each had fallen. Had they succeeded? Did the Force find them wanting?

 

He had to know. Such was the subject of his pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Sith; the very crucible of the exiled Dark Jedi, so many aeons ago. Did he pass the test?

 

* * *

 

First a pinprick, then a shaft of light plummeted into the collapsed tomb entrance, followed swiftly by the slender, dark-robed form of the Sith Lord. Igniting his saber, he scanned the room, now bathed in the claret hue of his weapon, making out scattered and shattered relics in a cramped corridor. A stale odour of dust and death broke through his transpirator mask, a cloying taste at the back of the Muun's throat. Raising the tip of his blade, he pressed forward, deeper into the tomb, scanning the walls for any hints that he was in the right direction. He had rigorously scanned the archives on Aborah, the "smoker" island that played host to almost the entirety of the Bane lineage's remaining annals - remaining, after Darth Gravid's deluded attempt to excise the history of the Sith and fuse it with Light Side teachings; heroically stopped by his apprentice at great cost to her body. Extensive though the archives were, they were not complete, and so Plagueis continued to grope in the dark on the subject of the forgotten, ruined catacombs of Korriban.

 

Ancient High Sith hieroglyphs lined the walls, accompanied by what seemed to be prayers or spells etched in a hieratic alphabet. Without the time for a thorough translaton, Plagueis could only recall key phrases from his research - "descendant of the heart" and "cleft by the overlord". Faltering for a moment in his brisk pace, Plagueis read the line again. Descendant of the heart. Cleft by the overlord. Was he correct? If so, this was the tomb of Hakagram Graush, King of the Sith, betrayed by his Shadow Hand and eventually - and brutallty - beheaded by Ajunta Pall, leader of the Dark Jedi Exiles. He was in the right place, and through the Dark Side would compel the dead Sith to his bidding.

 

Pressing ever-deeper into the catacombs, he came to the sepulchral chamber. Smaller than one might have anticipated, a rectangular room with walls daubed in cryptic Sith spellcraft and standing upright upon a platform was the long-forgotten sarcophagus of Hakagram Graush, bound in stone and time.

 

Holding his crimson-bladed lightsaber aloft, as if it were an opening salute of some elaborate duel, Plagueis began to speak, illuminated in the coruscating red pulse of his blade. "King of the Sith, Hakagram Graush, I am your ultimate successor; the benefactor of your people's tutelage and artistry through the generations of Sith, all stemming from this world. You will answer my demands; you will speak as I bid; and I command you do so!"

 

Even as his voice grew stronger, the tomb grew ever more silent. After the last echoes of Plagueis' demands faded away, he turned his sight inward again. Focusing on the particulate dust hanging in the air of the tomb, the ancient misdeeds wrought and the blood spilled in the name of this King... but ultimately, there was nothing. 

 

Taking a step back, and lowering his lightsaber, Plagueis stared at the lump of rock that might contain the dessicated husk of a dead Sith Pureblood with a gaping wound where his neck should be. That's all. 

 

That's  _all?_  He had allowed himself to believe that this tomb would contain power, or at least answers.

 

If this was the Dark Side's answer, then he didn't like it - but that hardly concerned Plagueis, this was merely a mistake. The wrong tomb. The answer lay elsewhere.

 

With a leap aided by the Force, the Muun Sith lord hurled himself from the tomb's floor and made an egress through the opening he'd created earlier. Squinting in the light of the system's primary, now beating down from high noon, he began to traverse the Valley of the Dark Lords once more, wary of anything remotely peculiar. 

 

A category that most would place the entire planet in; and Plagueis found himself unsurprised after witnessing his ninth sunrise in a row on Korriban, looming over the pyramidion of some forgotten fortress-academy. He'd now lost count of the ancient tombs, dead palaces and rotting repositories that he'd plundered, looted and made demands of; to ultimately no avail. Even violating the throne of Sorzus Syn, talisman-wright and practitioner of living Sith alchemy, had given rise to no response beyond the gurgling death-rattles of a few still-lingering examples of her forced arcane evolution that had, at least, proven a much-wanted distraction from the dust and sand that had otherwise opposed him. A disappointment. 

 

Was that what Bane had meant when he wrote off Korriban as having long lacked knowledge or wealth? Millennia of genocide, betrayal, forbidden experiments, galactic conflict and nothing to show for it - none of it resulted in the end of the Jedi Order or the Republic. Now Plagueis truly felt what, he believed, Darth Bane must have felt, a thousand years ago.

 

"FourDee, start the ship," Darth Plagueis uttered into a comlink. "We're done here. Set course for Sojourn."

"Yes, Darth Plagueis, sir. Should I take it from the tone of your voice, sir, that we were unsuccessful?"

"I'm not sure," Plagueis replied, taking a small, peculiar comfort in his long-time companion droid's concern.

 

Starfall was upon Korriban by the time Plagueis had returned to the ship, and only a thin band of blood-red sunset still illuminated a sandstorm that whistled through the Valley of the Dark Lords. With his zeyd-cloth robe bound tight about himself, he approached the Infiltrator, and signalled FourDee to lower the boarding ramp.

 

"Very good, sir. The ramp should be extended now."

"Now, FourDee."

"I have, sir."

"If you had, FourDee, I would be aboard already. Lower the ramp."

"Though I would not wish to contradict you, sir, the readouts in the cockpit state that it is lowered."

"Did Tenebrous really build one of the most advanced stealth ships only to skimp out on the boarding ramp," Plagueis muttered, as the sandstorm picked up, howling now. 

 

Plagueis chanced a look behind himself into the Valley while awaiting OneOne-FourDee's attempts to lower the ramp, and caught a glimmer of something in the distance. Almost a shimmering wave of heat, but at night? Turning fully to appraise the anomaly, Darth Plagueis raised a hand to his brow, focusing on it. The wind was deafening now, but no longer atonal in its scream; a strigilating, plangent harmony was now in the air, borne on the wind itself. Halfway between the ship and the wall of the next valley, the shimmering shape was beginning to take a more concrete a form; a massive form, a shadow stretching between the rock faces. It took form in but a moment, from glint to gigantic in an instant.

 

Lowering his hands to his sides, feet spread apart as the wind whipped his robes and cloak about him, the hooded Muun grinned with his eyes at the display. Faces past and future streamed across the solid shadow taking form above him, black as the void yet distinct as impressions on the Force itself. Finally it settled on one face - the colossal, disembodied ghostly head of Marka Ragnos, replete with massive horns and tell-tale Sith Pureblood cheek tendrils framing a trenchant expression - though not one voice, the wind shrieking with a hundred voices that would drive lesser men to madness. Voices, Plagueis suspected, of each and every Sith to have been buried on the tomb world of Korriban.

 

"You! You who would decry your heritage, who would excise the traditions of the Sith! Who would live forever, who would deign to live forever! You, who tear down aeons of power for your own end - you call yourself Sith?!"

Plagueis inhaled deeply through his breath mask, narrowly avoiding a lungful of sand, and retorted. "Did not the greatest of Sith Lords experiment with eternal life? Did not Emperor Vitiate live for millennia? To cheat death is but a tool."

The wind whirled the visage of Ragnos into a bellicose fury, but ignored the Muun's words. "You, who would dismantle the traditions of Korriban and forge anew - who spit on the memory of his betters by even claiming the title of Darth!"

Darth Plagueis paused a long moment, standing his ground and staring into the eye of the storm. "Why now? Why not when I stood in your halls, in your tombs? Why not before the attempt on my life?"

"Unworthy to hold a candle to his ancestors-in-lineage, even your master knew you were unfit for the mantle!"

Plagueis stopped again, but now simply stared up at the bellowing illusion, a familiar disappointment settling in. Either he was hallucinating from a desire for some sort of validation from his forebears, or worse, what little of the Dark Side yet lingered on Korriban was, in a word... pathetic.

"Answer my questions, vision! Heed my words and I may heed your own!"

 

Without another word the face of Ragnos rose further up and whirled around, blending in with the nascent shadows of the valley as all light faded on Korriban, the system's primary finally disappearing. The sandstorm's screams gave only a distant snort - if he hadn't imagined it - before returning, ultimately, to chaos.

 

Plagueis glowered into space. Of course he had passed his test. He had no need of validation from the long-dead who failed to impact the galaxy in a lasting way. He would survive beyond mere statuary, relic or holocron. He and his Apprentice would rule the galaxy, and nothing, not even the conspiring skeins of fate - or mummified Sith lords - could stop that. 

 

He turned to the Infiltrator to find the ramp lowered. Curiouser still, he hadn't heard it hit the ground, but found 11-4D at the top of the boarding ramp, its surgical appendages illuminated from behind.

 

"Forgive me, sir, but it would seem that the ramp is lowered, Darth Plagueis."

With a lugubrious sigh, the Muun paced up and into the Infiltrator. "It is indeed, FourDee. And it's Magister Damask, now. Lift off and make the jump to hyperspace at the earliest opportunity."

"Very good, Magister Damask. Can I get you anything else, sir?"

"Prepare a diagnostic scan. I may be hallucinating."

**Author's Note:**

> "... Is it possible that these Masters of the dark side succeeded in preserving their awareness? If so, can they still be queried for their secrets? Unfortunately, I have been to Korriban, and I am not convinced that these tales hold truth. The Tomb of Hakagram Graush remained silent to my queries, and the throne where Sorzus Syn once sat contained no mocking, imperious spectre. I was ready to conclude that the tales are merely diversions for the credulous, but as I boarded my ship in the Valley of the Dark Lords, I beheld a vision of the Sith Lord Marka Ragnos. The apparition challenged my claim to the Sith title and railed against my plan to dismantle the traditions of Korriban. But the vision of Ragnos would not answer my questions nor my delineated inquiries. He snorted and disappeared in a whirl of smoke. It is possible the entire episode simply played out in my mind..." - The Science of Creating Life, Darth Plagueis the Wise, as collected in his Darth Sidious' Book of Sith.
> 
> ===
> 
> This was written for a tumblr contest based on the character of Darth Plagueis, one of my favourite characters in all of Star Wars despite (because of?) only having one book and one small part of another book dedicated to him - the excellent Darth Plagueis by James Luceno, first and foremost. Rather than write something wholly original, I prefer to keep within canon, and decided to expand on an event mentioned in his segment of the Book of Sith where he basically gets yelled at by the spirit of Marka Ragnos, but because it doesn't respond to his logical reason, it just gives up and leaves. Update: I took 1st place in the contest! Woo!


End file.
